Pluto no longer a planet

Thursday, August 24, 2006 (Prague):

Pluto which has been considered a planet since 1930 was stripped of the title.

Leading astronomers from around the world finally defined what would be considered a planet and what would not.

Under the new guidelines, Pluto gets disqualified partly because it is too small and partly because its orbit overlaps with Neptune.

The need for definition was felt because astronomers have discovered a number of bodies that also have claims to the status of planets like Xena or Sedna in space beyond Pluto or the asteroid Ceres or even Pluto's satellite Charon.

Till Thursday, many believed that many of those bodies would be upgraded so that we would end up with 11-12 planets.

But instead, the astronomers decided to follow stricter norms, Pluto and the others will now be called dwarf planets.

source www.ndtv.com